He held out his hands to the flames--he felt cold, shiveringly cold.
He turned, as he had so often done in the past, for comfort to the woman now standing silent by his side, and who knew at once so much and so little of his real life.
"I wonder what really happened ?" he muttered.

"It was a most extraordinary thing! I've seldom met anyone so little hysterical or fanciful as--as is Miss Brabazon." And then: "Why, Blanche," he exclaimed, startled, "what's the matter ?" There was a look on her face he had never seen there before--a very troubled, questioning, perplexed look.
"I saw something too, Lionel," she said in a low voice; "I--I saw more than Helen Brabazon admits to having seen." "_You_ saw something ?" he echoed incredulously.
"Yes, and were it not that I am an older woman, and have more self-control than your young friend, I should have cried out too." "What _did_ you see ?" he asked slowly.
"What I think I saw--for I am quite convinced that I saw nothing at all, and that the extraordinary phenomenon or vision, call it what you will, was only another of Bubbles' tricks--what I saw--" She stopped dead.

She found it extraordinarily difficult to go on.
"Yes ?" he said sharply.

"Please tell me, Blanche.

What is it you saw, or thought you saw ?" "I thought I saw _two_ women standing just behind your chair," she said deliberately.
Varick made a violent movement--so violent that it knocked over a rather solid little oak stool which always stood before the fire.